The British government sold US$50,000 of high-tech spying equipment to the Philippines, giving Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte the tools to hunt down and kill dealers and addicts as part of his brutal war on drugs.
The equipment purchased by Duterte’s government included International Mobile Subscriber Identity-catchers,FULL STORY

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s move to ban a critical news Web site from covering the Malacanang Palace is a threat to media freedom, rights and media groups said yesterday.
Rappler, set up in 2012, is among a clutch of Philippine news organizations that have sparred withFULL STORY

Nineteen people, including 12 military personnel, were yesterday injured in an explosion on a bus in Sri Lanka, the military said, adding that it does not know the cause, but suspects it might have been a bomb or grenade.
Since the end of Sri Lanka’s nearlyFULL STORY

Sitting in his university office in Macau, professor Lei Heong Iok (李向玉) opens what he calls his “treasure” — a dog-eared Portuguese-language dictionary, its velvet cover worn and frayed.
Lei’s decades-long love for the language has turned him into a campaigner for its survival in theFULL STORY

A once-forgotten Mughal garden in the heart of New Delhi reopened yesterday after years of painstaking conservation work, creating a new public park in India’s sprawling and smog-choked capital.
The 36 hectare garden was formally opened by the Aga Khan, whose Trust for Culture has helpedFULL STORY

GERMANY
Dogs cannot vote
The Social Democrats (SPD) were on Tuesday forced to declare that a three-year old dog called Lima would not be allowed to vote with party members on a coalition deal with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives, despite joining the party. The Bild daily splashedFULL STORY

From the confines of his golf club, US President Donald Trump on Monday offered support for a limited strengthening of federal background checks on gun purchases while staying largely mum in the last few days about the victims of the Florida school massacre and theFULL STORY

Iranian search teams yesterday found the wreckage of a plane that went missing in the Zagros mountains two days earlier with 66 people on board, a spokesman said.
Aseman Airlines Flight EP3704 disappeared from radar as it flew over the Zagros range on Sunday morning,FULL STORY

Nepal’s ruling party has merged with a former Maoist rebel group to form a super bloc that experts say is to reshape politics after years of turbulence in the Himalayan nation.
Officials yesterday said the new alliance, the Communist Party of Nepal, was formally signed intoFULL STORY